Project Xanadu

[Sigma_Orionis]

Never heard of it? Don't worry, few people have.

Here's their web page

It's been called the longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing

Why bother? because its founder and chief "evangelist" pisses me off.

Why does he piss me off?

Because he (apparently) doesn't have the tech expertise? NO, he had an idea back in 1960 and lacked the tech resources to make it reality. Nothing wrong with that. We tech grunts tend to have tunnel vision (inherent and sometimes non-desirable side-effect of specialization). Hell, back in 1979 when the first spreadsheet program came out, I said to myself: "Big Deal I can write a two line BASIC program to do the calculations I need". My only excuse is that I was 13 at the time

Because he has tried and mostly failed for the last 40+ years to make his idea reality? Nope, It would be presumptuous of me to make a call like that. For all I know his idea is really revolutionary, or maybe it's a dead end. He got some funding from Autodesk in the 80s to implement Xanadu. For whatever the reason it didn't work. He does get credit for being persistent though.

He pisses me off because he's been whining for the last 20 years that the World Wide Web is a cheap ripoff of his grand design. Well, too bad sonny, Tim Berners-Lee led the project that became what we call "The Web" to solve a problem they had at CERN. It became popular and the rest is history, PERIOD.

But Nelson seems to have a gigantic chip on his shoulder regarding that. Take a look at this

With our limited resources we can only go slowly, unlike today's Red Bull-fueled young teams.

You know what? Cry me a River. I am in no position to judge how hard to implement his vision of Hypertext is. But, these days, you don't even need the own infrastructure where your project lives. And the tools to make it happen are something that back in the 80s (let's not even talk about the 60s) you could only dream of.

So far, there's talk that in 2014 actually presented a working prototype. But nothing after that.

I guess I should have placed this in BMR, but hey it's IT

[Cyborg Girl]

The "17 rules" sound kind of like how Windows NT handles access rights internally, but applied to networking instead.

I guess this kind of super-granular design, with access controls on everything and everything, could theoretically be very powerful and secure. But the devil is in the implementation details. Just look at what happened with Windows NT.

BTW, the "rules" are kind of interesting, because they would AFAIK require public-key crypto. RSA only emerged in the 1970s. I'll give the Xanadu team kudos for imagining that, at least.

...

Re the Xanadu site itself, it reads kind of like Richard Stallman, but with less subtlety. And the website consists of only 3 or 4 documents and a bunch of images, and is... not really organized very well.

I dunno, Stallman at least is known for having produced results. These people, nada, other than a ton and a half of rant.

Edit: seriously though, that f***ing writing style is probably my biggest pet peeve with certain people on my side of the political spectrum. Try, at least try, to sound like you're not a howling-at-the-moon crank. Please.

[Sigma_Orionis]

The "17 rules" sound kind of like how Windows NT handles access rights internally, but applied to networking instead.

I guess this kind of super-granular design, with access controls on everything and everything, could theoretically be very powerful and secure. But the devil is in the implementation details. Just look at what happened with Windows NT.

Ah, that mess, applied to networking? to quote Scotty: "Aye, sir. The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. " But you already knew that of course.

BTW, the "rules" are kind of interesting, because they would AFAIK require public-key crypto. RSA only emerged in the 1970s. I'll give the Xanadu team kudos for imagining that, at least.

I didn't really pay any attention to the Xanadu Rules. But reading them over made one thing clear: trying to implement Nelson's Rules is not easy, even with today's tools.

Re the Xanadu site itself, it reads kind of like Richard Stallman, but with less subtlety. And the website consists of only 3 or 4 documents and a bunch of images, and is... not really organized very well.

I dunno, Stallman at least is known for having produced results. These people, nada, other than a ton and a half of rant.

Oh yeah, absolutely

Edit: seriously though, that f***ing writing style is probably my biggest pet peeve with certain people on my side of the political spectrum. Try, at least try, to sound like you're not a howling-at-the-moon crank. Please.

Don't get me started on that, the bombastic rhetoric used by the nutjobs favor the extreme left is irritating enough. And, Spanish tends to be very verbose. So I'd say that reading their rants in Spanish is about as pleasant as hitting yourself with a sledgehammer, and just as productive.

Edited for clarity

[Swift]

[Sigma_Orionis]

Yep, that's about the size of it

[Thumper]

What a great movie!

[grapes]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperte ... ing_System

Articulating and instantiating a powerful vision is extraordinarily difficult, especially if you're a butthead. But that doesn't make it impossible--if you connect with the right people and have charisma (which in my book means you "smell" good), re: Jobs. I know.

[Sigma_Orionis]

So, to summarize:

Jobs: Asshole with Charisma that has a vision: Win

Stallman: Asshole with Skills that has a vision: Pass

Nelson: Asshole that has a vision: Fail